ArticleJournal of health communication2018
Communication of Scientific Uncertainty about a Novel Pandemic Health Threat: Ambiguity Aversion and Its Mechanisms.
Article in Journal of health communication, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 50 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
50 citing papers in PubMed.
- Exploring older adults' tolerance of uncertainty in colorectal cancer screening decisions.Patient education and counseling · 2026Trial
- Trial
- Psychological Impact of Ambiguous Health Messages about COVID-19.Journal of behavioral medicine · 2022Trial
- The Role of Cancer-Related Fatalistic Beliefs and Perceived Information Ambiguity in Lung Cancer Screening Uptake.Clinical journal of oncology nursing · 2026Article
- How Are Perceived Ambiguity and Risk Beliefs Related? Evidence From Longitudinal and Daily Diary Data.Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis · 2026Article
- Communicating scientific uncertainties: Effects of message and audience characteristics in the context of microplastic health risks.Public understanding of science (Bristol, England) · 2026Article
- Impact of COVID-19 on Mental Health: Sociodemographic Differences and the Moderating Effect of Religiosity.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2025Article
- How women respond to uncertainty in the context of genetic screening: A qualitative analysis framed by the uncertainty tolerance model.Journal of genetic counseling · 2025Article
- Uncertainty communication, trust and health promotion.Health promotion and chronic disease prevention in Canada : research, policy and practice · 2025Article
- Article
- Effect of Trust in Science on Parental Reactions to Messaging about Children's Epigenetics-Related Obesity Risk.Public health genomics · 2025Article
- Communicating scientific uncertainty in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic: A message experiment.Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis · 2024Article
- Examining psychological correlates of vaccine hesitancy: a comparative study between the US and Israel.Frontiers in public health · 2024Article
- The effects of communicating uncertainty around statistics, on public trust.Royal Society open science · 2023Article
- Effects of Prosocial and Hope-Promoting Communication Strategies on COVID-19 Worry and Intentions for Risk-Reducing Behaviors and Vaccination: Experimental Study.JMIR formative research · 2023Article
- The perceived long-term impact of COVID-19 on OCD symptomology.Journal of obsessive-compulsive and related disorders · 2023Article
- Decisions about adopting novel COVID-19 vaccines among White adults in a rural state, USA: A qualitative study.Health expectations : an international journal of public participation in health care and health policy · 2023Article
- Perceptions and tolerance of uncertainty: relationship to trust in COVID-19 health information and vaccine hesitancy.Journal of behavioral medicine · 2023Article
- The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on perinatal services and maternal mental health in the UK.BJPsych open · 2023Article
- Bouncing back from COVID-19: a Western Australian community perspective.Frontiers in public health · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Communicating scientific uncertainty about public health threats is ethically desirable but challenging due to its tendency to promote avoidance of choice options with unknown probabilities-a phenomenon known as "ambiguity aversion." This study examined this phenomenon's potential magnitude, its responses to different communication strategies, and its mechanisms. In a factorial experiment, 2701 adult laypersons in Spain read one of three versions of a hypothetical newspaper article describing a pandemic vaccine-preventable disease (VPD), but varying in scientific uncertainty about VPD risk and vaccine effectiveness: No-Uncertainty, Uncertainty, and Normalized-Uncertainty (emphasizing its expected nature). Vaccination intentions were lower for the Uncertainty and Normalized-Uncertainty groups compared to the No-Uncertainty group, consistent with ambiguity aversion; Uncertainty and Normalized-Uncertainty groups did not differ. Ambiguity-averse responses were moderated by health literacy and mediated by perceptions of vaccine effectiveness, VPD likelihood, and VPD severity. Communicating scientific uncertainty about public health threats warrants caution and further research to elucidate its outcomes, mechanisms, and management.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.